


unheard.

by mementheomori



Series: tumblr stories: slenderverse edition [1]
Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Jay has anxiety, and he is also a ghost, apparently the gift i'm giving is pain, this hurt to write, this was for the slenderverse gift exchange on tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25320013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mementheomori/pseuds/mementheomori
Summary: Jay has gone unheard both in life and now in death.Made for a gift exchange on Tumblr. Prompt: Ghost Jay haunting Alex.
Series: tumblr stories: slenderverse edition [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1833964
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	unheard.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilythepurplepalidin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilythepurplepalidin/gifts).



> This was made for the slenderverse summer gift exchange on Tumblr and my giftee was regina-trying-their-best. I hope you like it!  
> Thanks again to my pal Chel for beta-reading.

The world is a different color when you’re dead. It’s dull, like seeing everything through a thin veil. Like being bound by weightless chains. Like being nothing and everything all at once.

It’s not supposed to be anything Jay isn’t used to. He has gone unheard all his life, too scared to raise his hand in class, too afraid to speak up even when every fiber of his being was screaming at him to do so. He has always been a bystander, not a leader or the main character but a mere spectator of other people’s lives. Maybe that’s why he did all of this in the first place -- because he was wasting away without making an impact on a world that never truly heard him.

And now look where that got him.

Even now, as he screams his lungs out -- “Alex, stop, please. Don’t do this! Please. Please, I’m begging you …” -- no one hears him. Jay knows this feeling of complete and utter powerlessness all too well and yet it breaks apart what little hope there is left in him. It doesn’t have to be this way, he knows it doesn’t, but Jay is screaming far too quietly and Alex has never been one to listen.

He’s tried to warn Tim multiple times, has attempted to contact him through every means necessary -- dreams, mirrors, even possession once he got desperate enough, but none of it ever worked. One time, he put his hand on Tim’s shoulder and the other man flinched a little, which gave him just the tiniest bit of hope to keep going. Maybe Tim has always been more susceptible to these kinds of things. It sure wouldn’t surprise him. But that was the only time he got any kind of response and after days of trying over and over again, Jay thought it may have been a coincidence and decided to try and prevent Alex from causing even more harm. Again, without any success.

With how much that faceless thing affects Alex, Jay would have thought he would be more sensitive to his attempts to contact him. He’s not even sure whether he doesn’t hear him like Tim or whether he is consciously ignoring Jay’s desperate attempts and he doesn’t know which one he hopes it is. He already feels like a gigantic failure without that additional weight to drag him down. He couldn’t save Jessica, couldn’t help Tim, couldn’t even bring himself to run away from Alex as he pointed a gun at him. Jay’s life has just been an endless list of things he wasn’t able to do and even in death, that list only gets longer and longer.

Unlike the process of dying, death itself isn’t necessarily physically painful, at least not in a way that Jay is in any way familiar with. Without a physical form, Jay can’t even truly recall what being alive feels like. He’s in a steady state of duality. His body knows no pain and yet every part of him is aching, no exhaustion and yet every movement is cumbersome, no hunger or thirst and yet he’s starving and dehydrated

Alex is monologuing -- why is he always monologuing? -- but his words sound like they’re coming from far, far away, as though Jay is floating underwater while Alex is standing at the surface, his feet firmly on dry ground. There was a time when Jay thought being dead would be like not being born, just a dark nothingness, but this is so much worse.

He can’t smell the gasoline that Alex pours out on the floor, but the thought of what’s to come makes him sick anyway. Screaming and yelling and crying, he begins to claw at his back, but his hands just glide through him like they’re nothing. Like  _ he’s  _ nothing

His screams go unheard even as Tim’s house goes up in flames.


End file.
